Ebola Epidemic May End in This Year

29SepDiagnostics

September 29, 2015Diagnostics

An officer of WTO announced in the beginning of September that there had been some great achievements in the research of Ebola in western Africa in past few weeks. It means that the goal of ending Ebola epidemic may be reached.

“The three western African countries has came over the difficulties of dealing with
epidemic in rainy season and the rate of new infection stays low,” the officer said, “
since the middle of July, the growth number of new patients is only a single digit and the
virus transmission in Liberia was terminated again after the relapsing of epidemic.
Freetown—capital of Sierra Leone has no new infected case in past twenty one days. In
addition, Guinea has no report of new case in past seven days since last March.” So ,he
believed that the goal of ending Ebola epidemic in 2015 is practical.

Ebola virus, first found in 1976, can cause EVD and may lead to serious symptoms and even death. The average death rate of Ebola Virus Disease is 50% . Although the first outbreaks of Ebola was in villages in middle Africa, the current most serious epidemic breaks out in western Africa. How the Ebola virus spreads out? Fruit bats is regarded as the natural host of Ebola virus. Ebola is transmitted by touching the blood, secretions and other body fluid of infected animal. Later, Ebola virus spreads in human being. It is transmitted through touching the blood, secretions and other body fluid of infected people or through sex. People who are infected with Ebola virus will have a fever, headache and pain of muscle. Then, they will have vomiting, diarrhea , rash, impaired kidney and liver function Symptoms. Some will bleed. How to test Ebola? Antigen-capture detection tests, serum neutralization test, ELISA and RT-PCR are the authoritative diagnostic methods.

It seems that the epidemic has been in control. However, the low growth number of new cases doesn’t mean risks become smaller.In the third stage of the epidemic response, the point is to stock the current transmission chains and find and control the unknown transmission chains. Moreover, more than a half countries where Ebola epidemic has broke out will have outbreaks again in next two years. So western countries must collaborate with international companies to do the long-term surveillance.